Oil Industry's New Workers Have Great Eyesight—And Feathers

A bird returns to falconer Michael Gregston. His raptors work at a Montana refinery chasing off starlings, nuisance birds that sully the facility.
Brandi Sieminski

By

Hannah Karp

Updated Jan. 6, 2013 10:32 p.m. ET

Until recently, falconry—the ancient art of hunting small game with trained birds of prey—was just a hobby for Michael Gregston, who makes a living leading canoe trips down the Missouri River. But to supplement his income, he has been toting four of his rare hawks and falcons in the bitter cold to an unusual destination for a bird enthusiast: an oil refinery.

"The battle begins when the sun goes down," said Mr. Gregston, 60 years old.

Donning a bright green hard-hat and fireproof suit on a recent afternoon, he prepared to fly his prized birds into the labyrinth of pipes and towers at the Phillips 66 refinery in Billings, Mont., where thousands of starlings roost each night. With two nearby refineries likely facing similar starling infestations, he said, "I think I have some job security."

Big oil has never had the most bird-friendly reputation. But refineries across the country are now paying thousands of dollars a day to bring in rare raptors to chase away the nuisance birds that sully their facilities. It is a relatively new form of pest-control that is also becoming popular at farms and vineyards.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife department started issuing commercial falconry licenses six years ago and has only issued 92 as of last month. But refineries say falconry is proving far more effective than old methods like poison, pellet guns or sonar devices, and as the technique takes off, some oil-industry veterans are going soft for the birds, which can travel faster than 200 miles an hour and spot a meal from a great distance. Meanwhile falconers, many of them die-hard conservationists, say they are learning to appreciate the virtues of the oil industry.

"I have friends and associates who tell me I'm working for the enemy—but they're just real people too," says falconer Jim Tigan, a former military pilot who has been working to rid Exxon Mobil's refinery in Torrance, Calif., of pigeons. Mr. Tigan, whose duties for the company also include neutering feral cats and helping Exxon Mobil employees adopt them, says the sprawling guarded plant is a "wildlife oasis."

ENLARGE

Michael Gregston

Refineries get plagued with all sorts of pests, but starlings, which arrived in the U.S. more than a century ago, have become particularly vexing in recent years—their numbers continue to grow because they hail from Europe and have no natural predators in North America. The tiny birds travel in enormous flocks seeking warmth in the winter months, and their corrosive, slippery droppings pose safety hazards and can cause structural damage.

The starling problem started getting out of hand at the Valero McKee refinery in Sunray, Texas, about four winters ago. Each night the birds would descend in dense hoards that resembled dark clouds, creating a colossal, stinky mess through which workers had to wade in the morning. Employees tried in vain to scare them off with everything from fireworks to bottle rockets until finally the plant's health and safety manager, John Owens, did some research and decided to give falconry a whirl.

"I was willing to try anything," recalls Mr. Owens, who hired the first falconer who returned his call.

Mr. Owens accompanied falconer Roger Crandall and his hawks each night onto the refinery as the temperature dropped to 18 degrees. He put pictures of the hawks in the company newspaper, paraded them around the plant and encouraged refinery workers to hold them.

"I just thought it was pretty important to get the guys to buy in," says Mr. Owens.

Falconers typically fly a team of three to four birds for an hour nightly over a period of several weeks, until the starlings eventually disappear for the season. Using laser beams to focus the predators on certain areas, falconers simply release the birds into the air, which causes the starlings to scatter and squawk in distress. At the falconer's call, the predators zoom back to their perch.

It works, falconers say, because the threat of predation is the only thing that will keep nuisance birds at bay for longer than a day or two. As a bonus, there is hardly any carnage—the starlings flee out of sheer terror. On the rare occasion that a raptor does manage to scarf down a starling on the job, his shift is over, since the birds hunt only when they are hungry.

Letting the $1,000 birds loose in a refinery can be nerve-racking, though. Falconer Kevin Gaines says his birds have driven pigeons from a soy-flake plant in Oklahoma and chased vultures from a chemical refinery in Texas.

He refuses to fly his birds near "nasty wastewater," open tanks, acid plants and giant cooling fans, lest the birds get "shredded." He says he once found himself in a standoff with a worker who assured him it was safe to fly his raptors near an exposed electric rail.

"Look, this is a living creature," he says. "This is my employee. A bird can't read 'Hot, Do Not Touch.' "

Phillips 66 says it had tried everything from decoys to high-energy directional sound to rid its Billings refinery of starlings.

So when Mr. Gregston—the only commercially licensed falconer in Montana—sent management a video this fall showing how effective falconry had been at Valero's Texas plant, he says the refinery asked him to name his price. He asked for $93,000 for several weeks work.

"They didn't think that was enough money," says Mr. Gregston.

Phillips 66 spokesman Rich Johnson says "falconry has proven the most successful technique for controlling the birds." He says the company doesn't comment on matters involving payment.

Mr. Gregston was assigned an escort, a 33-year-old refinery maintenance worker who had been on the job for eight months. The worker, Dan Sieminski, said he had only volunteered because he was "the low man on the totem pole." But after a few days he was hooked. He quit his job and is now working full-time as Mr. Gregston's apprentice.

"I could not believe you could make a bird go hunting for you," says Mr. Sieminski.

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